(footnotes omitted).Here are the characteristics I have found common to anti-IRS lunatics:
•Lack of personal responsibility - If you could rewind the lives of these people and view them on your DVD, you would find that they have long histories of blaming everyone but themselves for their problems. For a good example of this, read my blog post about Joe Stack titled IRS Bomber Blamed Everyone But Himself;
•Extreme paranoia – To a man, these folks believe that the IRS has a personal vendetta against them. This feeling persists even where they owe a relatively nominal amount, have been given many opportunities to present their side of the story, and have consulted with several experienced tax professionals who have told them the IRS is right;
•Relationship problems- In addition to their IRS problem, the lives of these disturblings are riddled with difficulties. They almost always lack deep and satisfying relationships often having estranged themselves from their wives, children and siblings. Inevitably, those wives, children and siblings have become part of the vast worldwide conspiracy against them.
•Narcissism - Lunatic tax protestors truly believe the world revolves around them; that everything bad that happens is somehow directed personally at them. Their self-absorption extends even to natural phenemona [sic], like the weather. I knew one radical loony tune who as he was leaving my office noticed it had begun to rain. He pounded his hand on my desk and squealed like a stuck boar, “why is this always happening to me?“
•Gullibility – I could have approached Joe Stack two months ago and told him that the federal government was instituting a secret plan to exterminate everyone with an engineering degree and he would have immediately stocked up on canned foods and commenced building a bunker. And these are the same folks who believe others are gullible and naive for believing that the we landed on the Moon.
•Middle-Agedness - Extreme anti-goverment [sic] cretins are almost always between the ages of 45 and 65. Life apparently hasn’t worked out for them the way they wished it had. But instead of flying a plane into a building, why not do what every other red-blooded, American male in the throes of a mid-life crisis does: Buy a red sports car and date a hot blonde.
•Maleness – There are of course female anti-taxers, but they are rarely among the most extreme and almost always have adopted their radical attitudes at the behest of a man.
http://blog.pappastax.com/index.php/201 ... more-15233
One of the things I would add to those points is that although the majority of the wackadoosters do seem to be middle aged males, in my dealings with them I have often gotten the feeling that I am dealing with someone who is, mentally, an adolescent male (eg., Harvester/nationwide/johnthetaxist, Bob Hurt, Weston White).
